Business cards are typically small cards printed with one's name, professional occupation, company position, business address and other contact information. Business cards are often given out between colleagues at tradeshows, seminars, conventions, networking events and other events where professionals gather. Time at such events is limited and therefore attendees, venders and service providers must work to quickly identify other professionals of interest for effective distribution of business cards.
A common problem with the above is that individuals must personally introduce themselves and begin a discussion to determine whether the other party is the correct audience to receive a business card. If not, the individual may have missed an opportunity speaking to an appropriate person that is no longer nearby or in some cases it can be socially awkward to try and leave a discussion early.
Electronic communication between mobile devices is itself well known in the art; however, adapting such an approach for the selective delivery of virtual cards to particular members of a larger pool of members still raises challenges. First, there is a challenge in selectively delivering the virtual card to a limited audience. That is, a general approach of offering a virtual business card to everyone fails to specifically target a particular audience. However identifying the target audience is itself challenging. Typically, identifying the proper audience would first require personal interaction to screen the audience for appropriate members. This again brings about the above challenges associated with distributing printed business cards. Therefore there remains a need for the targeted distribution of virtual cards in an efficient manner.